In response to "all the previous posts" discussions, which I've read through a large chunk of them:

Some key logic is missing...

"Microsoft's trial period has expired, and they are FIRED!"

The grudge harbored against Microsoft by power users, tech guys and many users has been nursed from a raptor egg hatchling into a full grown killing machine. With each new OS release, Microsoft shoots both users and developers in both feet.

The workers and contibutors are forced between a simplified and scope-locked OS (Mac) and a very change volatile, insecure and unstable OS (Windows).

key point:

The pool of stagnate users that hate both OS choices for commercial products keeps growing. At what point will companies realize that people want to give mac and windows the finger and switch to linux?

"If you build it, they will come."

Microsoft is completely fired from my world but I'm forced to keep it running on a computer for: photoshop, flash and solidworks.

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Ambitious Adobe Manager Project:

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Scenario:

Business is business. There are X number of licensed Adobe product users.

Group A uses Mac, Group B uses PC.

Group C don't like either OS and would readily use a linux distro (such as Ubuntu) if they could.

Group Z has switched to linux completely and without Adobe love. They tolerate GIMP and outsource Flash development and such.

Domination Scheme 462:

1. Add a "poll section" to Adobe forums where every licensed Adobe user can specify their preferences.

2. Using inside business math, the "profitability point" can be reasonably well estimated.

3. Let the world see the numbers. Once conditions are specified to the public for something to come to market, it'll create support. When people have options, they will usually find themselves more discontent with what they have. If this frame of mind were established, I would guess it'd take 2-3 years to get full blown public support and other companies ready to invest in linux as well. (If Adobe put a $ amount on the project, I wonder if some rich investor would front the money, just to see what happens? ;-))

4. Math is math, once the numbers make sense, it only makes dollars to port the power to linux ;-)

(Obviously there is more to it from an internal management perspective. But lighting the fire of public support isn't too hard, especially when people are heaping up the fuel for you. The first big developer in the linux pool gets the spotlight, the stage and whatever else they want. What will be the first big fish? Linux is the one thing that can't go away. Talk about infinite returns on investment with little to no support.)

You say you've done the research, and yet you seem to be frustrated by the number of requests calling for Adobe to port Photoshop to Linux - clearly there is a market for it! Here's an interesting article: http://www.compoundtheory.com/?action=displayPost&ID=480 - it demonstrates that Linux users will pay for software, and in the case given pay more than their Mac or Windows counterparts!

I'd move away from Windows in a shot if I could only buy Photoshop for Linux (specifically Ubuntu). The world's leading image manipulation software + a stable (free) operating system? Seems like a no-brainer! I'd be willing to bet there would be a ton of people willing to switch over night if the option were there.

As far as I can see it's a stalemate that neither side wants or feels they can afford to break. On the one hand software companies who won't take a gamble for whatever reason and on the other users who won't move to a platform that won't entirely meet their needs. I'm sure Adobe have less to lose and more to gain by breaking that stalemate first!

There is a big difference between calls for something, and a market willing to pay for that thing.

Think about how many people want an Italian sports car, versus how many are willing to actually pay for them.

Sadly, people willing to pay a few dollars for small games does not translate into professionals willing to pay hundreds of dollars for desktop software.

Yes, Adobe would have a lot to lose: everything it spent on making the port, advertising money spent, etc. And it is not a stalemate -- the ball is in the Linux court. Linux developers and users can pick the ball up and join the game, or keep playing solo.

There is a big difference between calls for something, and a market willing to pay for that thing.

Think about how many people want an Italian sports car, versus how many are willing to actually pay for them.

I think that raises a totally different point, namely the prohibitively high cost of buying into Adobe products. As I say, another matter entirely... besides Photoshop is hardly a luxury product like a Ferrari - more a necessity for many designers.

I agree that the purchase of professional creative software can't be compared to low-cost games, but I think the principle is there. I'm merely saying the argument against developing for Linux as there is no-one willing to pay for it seems to me (and many others) to be invalid.

Strategically, it could be good for Adobe - helping to foster the design and development community on an open platform - and could really stick it to Apple (possibly not a priority for Adobe). Besides, Adobe taking a punt on the Linux market doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing effort does it? Maybe Adobe could dip their toe in the water with Fireworks? On second thought...

But what about users who are less strong-minded about free software, or even which OS they use?

I have often got the impression that hardcore photoshop users care far more about photoshop than they do which OS it runs on. If such 'killer apps' were available on linux, then surely linux would be far more attractive to more people - particularly the ones who aren't so averse to paying for software?

Chicken and egg I guess, must still be a big risk.

Personally the lack of certain pieces of commercial software on linux is the reason I still keep a copy of Windows. Ho hum.

Is this a robo-posting? You're just repeating the same stuff you said before (which still makes no difference: next to nobody is buying commercial software on Linux, which includes the ubuntu distribution).

Is this a robo-posting? You're just repeating the same stuff you said before (which still makes no difference: next to nobody is buying commercial software on Linux, which includes the ubuntu distribution).

Yes, I'm having to repeat myself because posters don't seem to understand the basic facts of the situation (and that they really aren't changing much over time).

You don't have to convince anyone here -- you just need to make Linux a better place for application development (develop some standards, fix the problems, etc.), and develop a market of users willing to pay for commercial software.

I hope you don't think we're trying to antagonise you Chris, I think it's interesting to have a debate about it. I'd be interested to know (if you don't mind divulging this information) what your capacity at Adobe is? Is there any published research by Adobe to support what you're saying?

Now I'm no expert when it comes to application development, but I think there would be quite a few Linux devs who would find those comments difficult to swallow. What standards should be developed to make Linux a better place? What problems need to be fixed?

A friend informed me that Photoshop has an old codebase (apparently around 20 years old) and built with a variety of languages across different architectures. If that's true, then that's an understandable reason for not producing it - but not a reason to blame Linux for not being up to scratch.

Photoshop's codebase is 20 years old, but constantly cleaned and refactored. Our codebase is C++, and pretty portable. That has nothing to do with not porting to Linux.

I doubt that the research is well published, since marketing research is usually perfomed by well paid research companies (and they want to keep getting paid). I see the research done every year or two, and the results barely change with respect to Linux users.

Linux still lacks standards for color management or fonts, and just barely has standards for printing. Things like tablet support are more than a little hacked, and drivers are still a nightmare. And that's just the problems I can see from occasional use, I'm sure there are more. And where is the standard UI toolkit (currently you can pick from 6 or more bad choices based on the mistakes of X Windows)?

Stabilizing the OS and adopting standards would make Linux more attractive to ports (and to write anything more complicated than command line apps). It would also be far more attractive when code can run on more than one distribution of the OS without major effort.

Yes, Linux devs without experience on other platforms might find the facts hard to swallow. But Linux is not a single OS, but a kernel used in many fragmented OSes with few standards.

And, AGAIN, the primary reason for no Photoshop on Linux: there is no market. Linux users are still not willing to pay for commercial software. You have to solve that problem before you'll get serious commerical applications.

Solving the standards problems would make Linux more attractive to developers, and then you might get more users. Right now, the sets of Linux users and developers are overlapping a little too much (when app tutorials start with "download these 8 packages and build them", you've got a problem).

In our company we use Linux (Ubuntu) and Photoshop a lot. Only our designers use Windows because they work with the Creative Suite software all the time. But they would love to switch to Ubuntu as well. So please don't tell that all Linux users are not willing to pay for software. We would LOVE to pay for Linux Creative Suite licences. The market may be too small for Adobe, but it does certainly exist.

Sure there are some Linux users willing to pay for software, but as you noted: most of them already do pay for Photoshop on a different OS.

So, how many new sales would be generated to pay for the Linux port? Just moving existing licenses between OSes would not justify the cost involved.

And that number is vanishingly small.

So, to make the port feasible you have 2 factors available: increasing the number of users willing to pay for software, and lowering the barriers to making a port (reducing the cost). The barriers aren't super high, but reducing them would help bring in other developers. But the lack of paying customers: that's a killer problem.

Photoshop on Linux would obviously be great for those of us who have already started to make the transition off Mac and Windows, and for a lot of other designers who are unhappily stuck on one of those platforms. I hear what Adobe's saying, though. They're just not in a financial position to port their software to a new platform without being virtually guaranteed success. It's much safer for them to stick to incrementally upgrading Mac and Windows, which presents only the small tradeoff, at least in the short-term, of some of their more tech-savvy customers losing interest in purchasing those upgrades. Long-term, let's hope the Linux community does whatever it takes to make Linux an attractive platform for Adobe, if it continues to be relevant.

Sure there are some Linux users willing to pay for software, but as you noted: most of them already do pay for Photoshop on a different OS.

So, how many new sales would be generated to pay for the Linux port? Just moving existing licenses between OSes would not justify the cost involved.

And that number is vanishingly small.

So, to make the port feasible you have 2 factors available: increasing the number of users willing to pay for software, and lowering the barriers to making a port (reducing the cost). The barriers aren't super high, but reducing them would help bring in other developers. But the lack of paying customers: that's a killer problem.

I use linux at home since 2000, and I use Debian Unstable because I love to spend some of my free time to contribute to help developers or package mantainer to make packages working fine or to suggest software changes. As you may know, linux community takes all ideas and suggestion and bug report seriously and the feedback time is really short.

In the place where I work i use Windows XP with SP3 and we bought recently Photoshop CS5. In two weeks I noticed several bugs and several ways to improve the UI. The most relevant bug is in the print dialog and this is out from MAY, we are in NOVEMBER. And Photoshop run in Windows XP that is a "well tested" (ok, I will stop to laugh....) OS, or at least it grant support to developpers and have lots of API to be used. And Photoshop still have serious bug.

Now imagine Photoshop on linux... every lib version have something different from the previous and Adobe programmers does not seem fast to rewrite part of software or to recover serious bug, or to give a real customer support service. This is why I won't buy a Linux license of Photoshop it there were one.

It isn't a Linux fault, it is an Adobe fault. What I have seen is a group of developer that does not care about user request, that does not study the reason of a bug passing the bug responsibility to the OS API or to drivers producers. The only way to take in serious consideration a Linux version would be an opensource version of photoshop, with a commercial license, but with sourcecode visible for everybody to see where it is wrong and to repair problems in the linux time.

What I really think is that the Adobe programmers are not so skilled as one may think and therefore I really think that the price of Photoshop should be decreased by a 30%, or new programmers hired, a serious bug-report system implemented and more customer assistance given to user.

I don't want to blame programmers, they maybe have too many task to do every day, but a delayed assistance is not an assistance, is just mantainance, and mantain on the market a product with known serious bug (even if the press does not talk about them... just talk about new stuff... and I wonder why) is take advantage of the software name instead of its quality.

Linux users want a good software, so in my humble opinion as a linux user, I am happy to have not such a buggy program at home.

Chris, I do understand your reaction on a commercial point of view. But on the customer care point of view I do not understand it at all. Basically you say: "We are not helping you, existing customer, with a Linux version. You are already a customer, we already have your money, so why would we put any effort in helping you at all?"

Mark - how would we pay for the effort to port to Linux? Selling to people who already buy the product won't make additional money needed to make the port, much less support a new platform. Even from a customer point of view: you already have the product, and are using it, so there is nothing to gain from a Linux port.

Chris, I have thought about it but apparently your point of view is miles away from mine. I think you make a lot of money with Photoshop, and that's fine. You could use just a small bit of it to serve your existing (and future) customers wit a Linux version. You don't do this because you want to be 100% sure that all development costs will be covered by new Linux licenses immediately. I still think that's very strange, am I allowed to?

And how can you say that I have nothing to gain by a Linux port? I am not using Photoshop myself, my colleages do. They have to use Windows with all the trouble only for Photoshop (and other C.S. software). We pay a lot for Windows licenses, antivirus software, etc. Every now and then a designer's PC is infected with a virus (despite the antivirus software), Windows gets broken, PC's have to be reinstalled, etc. etc. All problems that do seldom (never, in fact) occur with our Linux workstations.

That depends on whether your business is financially prepared to innovate. If it is, investing in long-term development isn't such a sure route to disaster. From this thread, though, it seems increasingly clear the position Adobe is in. It's a shame, because Photoshop has been a great product and I don't think any of us want to see it fade into irrelevance.

I'm not sure how failing to support a non-existant market equates to fading into irrelevance.

Long term development would be great - if there was SOME promise of the market developing, some sign that it was actually growing and willing to pay for software. And that just isn't happening for the Linux desktop market.

we've gathered hundreds of thousands for many crappy things over and over, so getting what you want for PS wont be a problem.

Its the chicken and the egg dilema...

While our user base may be smaller than other platforms at the moment (in part your fault), doesnt mean we cant movilize and organize in ways that you will never see Ever in any other of those platforms.

We are NOT sheep like other OS users, we dont purchase things because of fad or dumb things like that (remember the pet rock fad?), we're highly organized, intelligent, motivated and may i say very "powerful community" that will do anything for its OS to become adopted by the world. Adobe is making this more dificult than it needs to be, it certainly is a road-block, you guys are the egg.

Test us and you will be surprised with our power to movilze resources and workforce.

So why not give us those numbers? You have nothing to lose and surely millions to gain. I can not make this more simple for you, is like a blank check staring at your face.

Anyway, am sure i'll hear another excuse from you guys.

so in reply to that same statement:

"But we'll keep asking, and hoping that the Linux community develops."

In conclusion it seems you havent asked loud or clearly enough!

And it is not a stalemate -- the ball is in the Linux court. Linux developers and users can pick the ball up and join the game

Note this is nothing personal Chris, so we would appreciate if you guys can work with us here. So yes, now The Ball is on your court.